Psi Communication Through Dream Sharing

By Montague Ullman

Paper
presented at the Parapsychology Foundation Conference on "Communication
and Parapsychology," held August 9-10, 1979, in Vancouver, Canada. Dr.
Ullman, a psychiatrist in private practice, is a former President of the
American Society for Psychical Research in New York.

Introduction

While awake our view
of ourselves is one in which we see and stress our autonomy, our individuality,
our discreteness. We define our own boundaries and we try to work with them. What
I'm suggesting, and which is not at all novel, is that our dreaming self is
organized along a different principle. Our dreaming self is more concerned with
the nature of our connections with all others. There is some part of our being
that has never forgotten a basic truth, that in our waking lives throughout
history we seem to have continuously lost sight of. The history of the human
race, while awake, is a history of fragmentation. It's a history of separating
people and communities of people in every possible conceivable
way-geographically, nationally, religiously, politically.

Our sleeping self, I
am proposing, is connected with the basic truth that we're all members of a
single species and that while dreaming our concerns have to do with what has
happened in the course of waking experience that interferes with, damages, impedes,
obstructs or enhances these connections. While asleep, we seem about to
drastically alter the way we experience space and time. While awake, we move
through our lives in a sequential, linear moment-by-moment fashion with a point
representing birth and another point the present moment. But when we go to
sleep and begin to dream we create pictures of what's going on in our psyche
from a point that, in terms of space and time, seems to be outside of our
waking organization. We are able to recall events going deep into our past. The
amount of information that can be gathered from the past is often greater than
anything we're able to recall while awake. With this information available we
can project much more accurately the implications of a present concern. If
parapsychological data are valid, this scanning process does not seem to be
limited to the individual.

We experience the
dream as a series of images that move in relation to each other and seem to
develop in some kind of a sequential pattern. Where do these images come from?
We have to go back and define how we look upon the substrate. If the substrate
has to be broader than the individual, then, to use an analogy, we're talking
about some kind of psychic black hole of highly condensed information about
ourselves and others that, under the conditions of sleep, we seem able to tap
into and extract what we need to know about ourselves and others that is
relevant to our immediate life situation. We have no way of processing that
much information as quickly as is necessary under the conditions of dreaming,
unless we process some of it all at once in terms of an image, and then process
the images sequentially to capture all the information that's available to us.
The dream is this first transformation out of an undefined information source.
At times we come upon information that we have no right to know about in terms
of waking causality and the natural space and time order of events.

When we awaken, this
information undergoes a second transformation into what Shakespeare referred to
as "words, words, words." Each of these transformations involves
information loss. The dream has no way of capturing all the information in that
original source. The waking state has no way of capturing all the information
in the dreaming source. It is simply a remembrance, but a rich and significant
one. Without going into all of the interesting qualities of our dream life, I'm
going to emphasize what I think are the most important.

In the first place the
imagery of our dreams comes out of feelings that reflect what is really going
on in our lives at that time. Honesty is a quality of the images we create.
Secondly, the images are concerned with the issues of connectivity, how human
beings are connected with each other. Dreams deal with events that interfere
with these connections. They reflect our concerns with maintaining and
preserving these connections.

Dreams take as their
starting point a recent emotionally intrusive event in our lives. At some time
during the night the feeling residue of this event seems to trigger a backward
scanning into the deepermost recesses of our remote memory system to retrieve
those aspects of our past experience that are emotionally related to the
current situation. As we have noted, the pictures that we come up with and that
are experienced as our dream are honest reflections of our feelings at the
moment and of their connection to events in our past. In effect, we have taken
a series of true-to-life photographs of the relational field we find ourselves
in at the time we are dreaming. It is a field that includes much more
information about ourselves than is readily available to us in the waking
state. The existence of psi in the dream suggests that, under certain
circumstances, the scanning process extends beyond our spatial borders to pick
up information clairvoyantly or telepathically and beyond our temporal limits
to pick up information precognitively.

The pictures we form
in our dreams are remarkable in a number of respects. We project ourselves out
of our accustomed space-time ordering of events and seem able to view the
entire range of our existence from a point outside our waking system. Whatever
that perspective is, it is outside space and time as we experience those
categories while awake. Furthermore, the images we come up with tend to be
metaphorical. rather than literal or direct reflections of our situation. While
asleep, we transform our primitive imaging capacity into the distinctly human
capacity for metaphor. We will refer to the metaphor of the dream image as the
oneiric metaphor, in contrast to the metaphor of waking speech. The reason our
dream images take this form has been dealt with elsewhere.1,2 In
brief, it derives from the vigilance hypothesis of dreaming, which holds that
the dream images we form are primarily self-confrontational and function as
emotional regulators of the state of arousal during the REM (Rapid Eye
Movement) or dreaming period. While asleep we exist in a state of social
isolation. It is important for us while in this state to assess what it is we
feel in terms of the relative safety in remaining asleep. Metaphors express
feelings and the metaphorical images of the dream mobilize and express a level
of feeling appropriate to the nature and importance of the particular issue we
are grappling with. The intensity of the feelings aroused by their metaphorical
expression determines the outcome of the REM stage. Awakening occurs when the
feelings mobilized cannot be contained within the sleep state and necessitate
the return of the waking state and the protective social cushioning we
experience in that state.

When psi effects occur
during dreaming they will influence this monitoring process and if intense
enough will produce awakening. Our model suggests that psi can enter the dream
by way of metaphorical expression as well as directly.

What follows in this
presentation is a consideration of the implications of these features of the
dream for psi research. The views of the human condition awake and asleep are
quite different and experimental strategies might be more productive if both
dimensions of our existence were taken into account. In this paper I will
discuss a beginning investigation along these lines. My other three types of
close encounters with psi in dreams (spontaneously, clinically and
experimentally) have convinced me of the validity of this approach. Each of
these experiences sheds a different kind of light on the paranormal dream but,
taken together, they suggest that the properties of the dreaming phase of our
existence are largely unexplored in their potential significance for the
manifestation of psi. More specifically, the occurrence of psi in dreams
suggests experimental approaches that are qualitatively different from those in
general use.

Psi events seem to
register changes in the same emotional field that the dreamer is preoccupied
with. Were the focus of investigation to shift to this field, then efforts
might be devoted to identifying and developing a psi favorable field. A psi
effect that occurred within such a field would be spontaneous and
unpredictable. Subject, agent and target could not be specified in advance. The
subject, agent and target status would be identifiable only after the fact and
would be derivative factors from an even larger field, all operating beyond the
control of any one individual. Psi would then enter the dream as another means
at the disposal of the dreamer for learning about and managing the state of his
emotional connectedness to significant others. Psi derived imagery, as well as
more intrinsically personal imagery, would be set in motion by the existence of
the social disconnect that characterizes the dreaming state.

In our dreams we are
presenting and transforming imagery. Let us look more closely at the oneiric
image and explore some of its features that may have a bearing on the
occurrence of psi. Imaging itself is a concrete mode of presentation that
relies on form, color and, in general, the transmission of information at a
sensory level. The transformation of the simple or literal image into a visual
metaphor extends the range and heightens the informational impact of the image
at a feeling level. In lower animals, if imagery does occur, and there is some indirect
evidence that it does,3 the literal image probably suffices to
monitor the level of arousal during the REM state. In humans, with sources of
potential threat arising more in connection with more subtle changes in an
emotional field, rather than the recall of actual danger in a physical field,
the image transformed into metaphor serves as a more versatile adaptive
mechanism for registering such effects. We have generally relied on the literal
reflection of psi perceived events in dreams as a mode of detecting them. The
possible relationship of psi events to the metaphorical transform is still to
be explored.

The attributes of the
oneiric image possibly related to psi events include

(1) The source of the images in feelings. It is our feelings which
mobilize the information we need either from our past or, paranormally, from
external sources, to shed light on a current predicament. The feelings are then
reflected back as metaphorically expressive imagery. The feeling tone now
conveyed by these developed images assess emotionally the relevance of the
matter before us to our immediate future.

(2) Our dreams are future oriented and serve as indicators of what lies
ahead emotionally as a consequence of certain recent events in our life. Psi
events, especially as manifest in dreams, seem to have a predilection for
future events.

(3) Our dreams are fundamentally concerned with the assessment of
damage to, repair of, and enhancement of our connections to significant others.
The same concern with connectedness may be said to hold for many manifestations
of psi.

Another interesting
property of imagery as experienced during sleep that may be relevant to psi is
the absolute and unquestioning sense of reality associated with it, regardless
of how bizarre or unreal it may seem to us from the vantage point of the waking
state. All the images we put to use in our dreams are, in a sense, derived
primarily from the "outside." That is to say, they are social in
origin and exist somewhere external to ourselves as a kind of pool of available
social imagery created by the social habits of human beings. While dreaming, we
experience these images in their external, real, outside or objective
attributes. At the same time, we experience them as internal, inside and
subjective. In fact, the distinction between outside and inside, object and
subject seems to disappear. Our relation to the image while asleep enables us
to experience it as inside and outside at the same time. We have shifted from
dualistic outlook to a non-dual level of experience. Once awake, we experience
the image as inside only and also less real. We have assumed a dualistic
position which removes us from the feeling of reality formerly connected with
the image. The image now strikes us as derived from a memory source and seems
like a pale reproduction of some former reality. Perhaps that is not the case
at all, but a necessary illusion to maintain our dualistic mode of operating
while awake. We drain the images of their objective reality and salvage only
those attributes that support our sense of our own discreteness and
separateness from the world about us. In our sleep subject-object,
observer-observed, inside-outside come together. Perhaps that is a crucial
condition for psi effects to occur. Instead of being something mysteriously
different from the ordinary imagery that appears in our sleep, these effects
may be of the same order and origin as our visual images, but more extended in
their spatial and temporal range (as that range is experienced while awake). In
this connection it is of some interest to recall Penfield's experiments in
electrical stimulation of the exposed temporal lobe during brain surgery.4
Under these circumstances there is not simply recall of an earlier
memory, but the re-emergence of the memory in its original form as a. real
experience. It is experienced as "inside" but real
("outside"). A past context reassumes - or perhaps never lost - its
realness. It has the flavor of the inside-outside or subject-object unity of
the dream, but it occurs while awake and has some of the flavor of the nondual
mode that characterizes dreaming. It is as if the electrical stimulus disrupts
the absolute control of the dual mode.

What we are proposing
is that the imagery display in our dreams is more complex than the re-emergence
of stored memories. The images seem to retain their connection with their
source which, in the dual mode, is experienced as external to the bodily
boundaries of the individual. They are experienced as real, as existing outside
of the dreamer's conception of himself and as defining the relationship
independently of the dreamer's wishes. In principle then, psi events would not
pose a special problem of transmission or communication, but would simply
represent an extension of the imaging process to a larger range of available
social imagery than the dreamer usually draws upon. The nature of psi-related
imagery suggests that this may occur accidentally or, more often, as a response
to considerable emotional turbulence.

There is evidence from
clinical and laboratory sources that interest in and a positive orientation to
psi interactions favor the occurrence of such events. Our ordinary memory field
is also determined by interest and attention. The extension of these attitudes
to psi events brings them into what we experience as our memory field. Just as
our normal memory is selective for certain events that depend on interest and
emotional charge, so is our "memory" for psi events. In both
instances an aspect of the source is from outside the self. In a non-dual mode
this is not experienced as outside or inside, but as both. In a dual mode
memory is experienced as inside and psi events (in the waking state) as
outside. Our way of experiencing, of being in the world, is what creates the
dilemma that psi poses for our waking orientation. What we experience as a
separate and unique kind of event, namely a psi effect, is simply a widening or
deepening of an "external" source of available social imagery that
can become the building blocks of our dreams. Together they help us confront
ourselves during the cyclically recurring periods of dreaming with pictorial
renditions of the emotional cross currents of our lives. This suggests the
possibility that, through our interest in and involvement with the psi
dimension of reality, we increase the likelihood of our encounter with psi
under circumstances in which we move closer to a non-dual existence.

Imagery then appears
to be more than a mode of registering, incorporating and recalling new data.
Our images never seem to lose their linkage to the outside. Playback during
dreams and electrical stimulation of the brain calls our attention to these "outside"
or real connections. It is this sense of reality in the dream, for example,
that rivets our attention on them and enables them to serve as expressive
self-confrontations. While dreaming we are concerned with issues of connection,
continuity, affinity and wholeness. The creation and deployment of the visual
metaphor is a remarkably powerful way of revealing, at a feeling level, just
where we are in relation to these issues and the impact of recent events in our
lives upon them. In our dreams we give visibility to the emotional components
of the interpersonal fields of greatest importance to us. The potential for psi
events is probably intrinsic to this field but hardly ever actualized because
of our underdeveloped sense of the reality of psi.

The Use of the Experiential Dream Group as a Psi Facilitating System

Based on the point of
view developed above it seemed essential to address the task of working out a
waking approach to dreams that could help both to stimulate and to identify psi
effects. The goal was to take into account the nocturnal and the diurnal
dimensions of human existence and the varying degree of openness to psi that
characterized each state. In recent years I have been developing and exploring
a small group approach to experiential dream work as a way of bringing people
into a close, honest and helpful relationship to the images they create at
night. The question to be explored was whether or not, in bringing people
closer to their dreams, we could at the same time generate psi effects and
bring them closer to their recognition.

The Experiential Dream Group

The process involved
in experiential dream group work is not given in detail in this paper. In
brief, it rests on the principle that an interested and concerned social
response system is necessary to help the dreamer connect with the images he has
created. The group carries out this task by assuming the role of a helping
agency, rather than as an outside authority with access to specialized
knowledge about the dream. In its way of functioning the group follows the
natural contours of the dream. These include

(1) Respecting the dreamer's authority over his own dream.

(2) Respecting the privacy of the dreamer and the private realms
touched on by the dream.

(3) Respecting the uniqueness of each dream and of the dreamer. In
practice this means:

(1) That the dreamer
controls the process and is the final judge of any meanings given to the image.

(2) That the dreamer
controls the level of self-disclosure he feels comfortable with and is not
pushed beyond that level.

(3) That no a priori
categories of meanings are superimposed on the dreamer. Only the meanings felt
by the dreamer to be true are true.

Rationale

Experiential dream
work generates emotional closeness among the participants. It is expected that
this developing rapport in combination with the natural psi facilitating effect
of the dream itself, would result in an increasing number of identifiable psi occurrences
among the members of the group. It represents, in effect, a two-pronged
approach that attempts to generate psi through sharing waking and dreaming
experiences. We rely on the orientation and interest of the group in psi to
capture psi events in the non-dual mode of the dream state and then to heighten
the possibility of interactive psi events among members of the group through
experiential dream work and the sharing of dreams. The emotional set of the
group and the challenging novelty of each dream heightens the expectancy level
to the possibility of psi occurring in dreams and prevents the process from
ever lapsing into a stereotyped or repetitive pattern. The procedure lacks any
formal experimental design features and maintains an air of challenge,
curiosity and spontaneity. At the same time deep and significant motivational
patterns are exposed and shared.

Procedure

Every member of the
group has had prior exposure to the experiential group approach to dreams.
Meetings of the group occur weekly for approximately one and a half hours.
There has been a nucleus of five[1],
although at times as many as seven or eight have participated. Dream diaries are
kept by each member. The dreams of each week are typed, copied and distributed
at each meeting. Time is set aside to review and compare the dreams of others
to his or/her own dreams as well as to look for correspondence among the dreams
of others. From this point on the process evolves quite informally. It may move
into an experiential process around a particular dream or we may begin by
pointing up and exploring what strikes us as interesting correspondence. We tend
to move into the experiential work with a dream if someone feels some urgency
to get help from the group with a particular dream; otherwise, we would be more
involved in checking each other's dreams for correspondences, noting any
correspondences between the dreams of others and events in our own lives and
any correspondences between our dreams and paranormally apprehended events in
our own lives.

In the process of
exploring such correspondences we might shift into the experiential mode to
deepen our understanding of the imagery in question. The experiential work
exposes any correspondence at a metaphorical level; the dream sharing any
correspondences at a literal or manifest content level, and the dream recording
any psi correspondences between the dreaming and waking life of the dreamer. We
are engaged in a collective fashion in a process that maximizes the psi
retrieval aspects of dreaming. Just as the Toronto group' seemed to get
physical effects with a table through their collective expectations that,
somehow or other, they could get Philip's ghost to produce such effects, so we
developed a collective set with regard to the occurrence of ESP effects. A
light and informal spirit prevailed and excitement mounted whenever we seemed
to be in pursuit of a suggestive correspondence. Our judgments of
correspondences remain purely subjective. No blind or objective judging
procedure has been introduced. No target is stipulated in advance nor are
percipient-agent relationships designated in advance. While this leaves wide
open the possibility of reading the likelihood of extra-chance factors into the
correspondences, we note it was our hope that some of them would be striking
enough or occur often enough to survive this bias. At any rate, at this
exploratory stage no design features for blind judging have been introduced.

Results

Since there was no
advance structuring of what kind of correspondence to look for, we were using a
wide net to capture correspondences along a variety of axes, such as, for
example:

(1) Correspondences among the dreams of two or more group
members.

(2) Correspondences between the dream and the lives of one or
more members of the group other than the dreamer.

(3) Correspondences, telepathic or precognitive, between the
dream and events in the life of the dreamer.

The correspondences at
this stage in the evolution of the group are no more than suggestive. When
noted, they would provoke interest and further exploration with the goal in
mind, not of pinpointing their evidential value, but as a way of maintaining a
high level of excitement about and engagement with work we were doing. We were
inviting psi occurrences, so to speak, in a relaxed, playful way, rather than
with a quantitative concern with the evidentiality of the data. Our hope is
that, if the group can continue to generate enough data, the qualitative
results would speak for themselves.

Example 1.
Dream to dream

On April 9, 1978, 1
had the following dream:

"There were preparations for a large scale dinner meal for 150
people. Some people felt the meal would be stereotyped and wanted more variety
than could be arranged for so many."

The same night Barbara
had this dream:

"Food is laid out on several tables-varied gourmet foods. It seems
as though this has been done in Tom's honor. I am there as his guest. I am
sampling foods and they are delicious. It occurs to me that this is wasted as
far as Tom is concerned as he is a picky eater. I then see an image of Tom with
a sort of webbing (iridescent) going out from him all around. This is to
symbolize the way his eating pickiness is related to many other areas of his
life. I wake up thinking how true this is."

While references to
food are not uncommon in dreams, they were not particularly characteristic of
Barbara's or my dreams.

The suggestive points
here are:

(1) The dreams occurred the same night.

(2) They both involve or imply a large scale
meal.

(3) In each case there was some kind of
complaint or implied complaint.

Example II.
Dream to reality involving the group

In this instance the
correspondence was a bit more unusual. It linked a dream occurring on the
morning the group met to an unexpected event involving the group later that
day.

Barbara's dream of
Dec. 1, 1977:

"It was just like a scene. I didn't have the feeling of being
inside. There was a man talking to me from behind a counter. There were bare
shelves. Nothing was finished off. There were three pair of eyeglasses. All had
the right lens removed, like a monocle. One pair had very small hexagon lenses,
down low like Thomas Edison. Also a jeweler's eye piece. There was something
about an Oriental who sounded Italian giving an explanation or directive."

Shortly before (half
an hour) the group was to come together for its regular weekly meeting at the
American Society for Psychical Research, I ran into John Cutten, the former
Executive Secretary of the SPR. He was visiting and had spent the night at the
Society. I hadn't known he was in town. I extended an invitation to join our
research group meeting and he accepted. His ears perked up on hearing Barbara
recount her dream. He confided that the left lens of his eyeglasses was a dummy
so that, in effect, he had only one lens. He also remarked that he had recently
given a talk to foreign students, among whom were several Chinese students. One
of them asked him why there were more haunted houses in England than anywhere
else.

Barbara was listening
to his account with growing interest and then commented: "England has
always had a certain fascination for me. I feel somehow that their attitude and
their history is more connected with psi. I visited England three years ago and
it is as if one were surrounded by old souls. Psi is in one's consciousness
more than here."

Barbara then amplified
some of the elements of her dream: "The man was someone of great wisdom, a
guru type with knowledge to give me. The glasses were smoked. You couldn't see
very much with them, but it was as if you had second sight. The monocle-like three
pair of glasses and the jeweler's eyepiece were all connected. The man could
see whatever he wanted to see. I connect the hexagonal lens with Edison, the
inventor who shed light."

She added more about
England: "I watched the British jubilee and saw the Queen of England. The
old buildings there were revered. I admired the places I visited, places where
people had lived so long ago."

Barbara was questioned
about the events in her life prior to the dream. "Last night an incident
occurred in which I was teased about being a witch. My supervisor said to
someone in my presence: `She dreams of what goes on in your head.' I was very
eager to get back to our meetings after the Thanksgiving vacation. Last night I
was also thinking about the research on schizophrenia that I'm doing and the
relevance of the right brain-left brain work."

In the dream Barbara
had no feeling of being in the store, yet she was aware of the counter in front
of her and the man on the other side. In the actual situation, as it turned out,
Barbara was seated at a table directly opposite Mr. Cutten.

Here, of course, the
most striking feature was related to the unusual eyeglasses in the dream and,
in reality, with a number of less striking supporting features. Barbara has been
the one in the group most consistently involved in presumptive psi effects.

What follows are a few
more examples which, in themselves, may seem trivial but which alerted us to
the kinds of correspondence to look for, as well as helped to maintain our
level of interest and excitement about the project.

Example III.
Dream to dream

Barbara's dream of
March 18, 1979:

"I have to take a driver's test-not the basic operator's test, but
an oral one. Jim and I are in my car with him driving to get to the place to
take it. We have to cross a sort of bridge onto an island. He drives on, but is
not square on it and as he leans out the car tips off into the water with him
in it. I have just stepped out and am standing on a landing. The car is
completely immersed. I wait for Jim to come up (I know he will in a minute) and
when he does I give him a hand and pull him out. We have to get someone to get
the car out and I still have to take the test. I view all this as more of an
inconvenience than a catastrophe. There is a little house with a phone in it
and a hen's nest. The phone apparently connects with a house nearby. A sign on
the post says: `For assistance pick up phone and wait for answer. Do not come
to main house unless invited. Crotchety old woman. Do not gather eggs.' I pick
up the phone and there is recorded music and recorded sounds of a chicken (made
by a human being) on it-I am still waiting for an answer as I wake up."

My dream of March 19,
1979:

"Getting back something very valuable, perhaps jewels, and fleeing
with someone from pursuers. I find a taxi and am impatient with the person
getting out. We help him out. We go to a house. Someone seems to know where we
are going. I am afraid he will tell the pursuers. We stop the car because of
snow and find ourselves at a crowded bar. There was a screen where porno movies
were going to be shown, but none were shown. We were going to start out again.
There was something wrong with the brake shoes and someone volunteered to fix
them. In the morning I was surprised to find we were on an island."

Both dreams involve an
island and trouble with a car.

Example IV.
Dream to dream

Barbara's dream of
March 22, 1979:

"Sometime during the night-remembered on the way to work. Woman in
the apartment on the second floor has done a painting called `leg.' It is
shaped sort of like a ham. It has skin and inside is filled with wires or veins
or both. She believes this has some beneficial effect and is trying to
influence a woman to try it instead of psychiatric treatment which I am
advising. I am very curious to see it and its purported effects." '

My dream of March 22,
1979:

"Something about a Grant Wood painting. Something about a
degenerative disease. Going to see the doctor who took Dr. Friedman's place. He
was a stumblebum who had trouble understanding why we were there and seemed
confused. There were EEG records when we wanted EKG records."

Both dreams involve
the subject of painting in combination with an ailment of some sort.

Example V.
Dream to reality event in life of a group member

My dream of March 28,
1979:

"I'm working as a doctor and examining three patients. I take the
first one. She has a sore throat. I examine her chest and have a hard time
getting her to breathe right. On percussion there is dullness over left upper
lobe. I went to a nurse on the operating room for a prescription blank to give
her something like 'phylopenicillin.'

I'm visiting Jesse. He is in his pajamas and so am I. He is practicing
medicine and I'm surprised how carefully he has kept notes and has studied
pharmacology. Then I leave and his aunt helps me find my coat."

Barbara reported the
following events that occurred the night before my dream: "Tuesday night I
received a call from my former mother-in-law, whose name is Jessie. She has had
great difficulty over the past seven years with chest infections. I had
suggested to her in the fall that she take Vitamins C and E. She told me
Tuesday night that she had been taking them and that I was right. She hadn't
had a chest cold all winter. I did speak with three people that night-Jessie
and her two younger sons."

Jesse is an old friend
with whom I have not been in touch for a number of years. He had been ill
recently. He is not a physician.

The correspondence
lies in the name of Jesse and the fact that both Barbara and Jesse were
"practicing medicine without a license."

Example VI.
Dream to dream

Barbara's dream of
March 13, 1979:

"Nelson Rockefeller and Megan Marshak, they are cousins to each
other and cousins to me also. At the time of his death we had an appointment to
play basketball. Cartoon 'Doonesbury' has a new character. A very political pig
named Rigg."

My dream of March 15,
1979:

"I'm at some camp or resort. Arthur Schlesinger is telling me that
he just played tennis with Jim Terry. I say that I taught Jim how to play.
Schlesinger asks who plays better. I say I think Jim can beat me. Barrack scene
with three cots, presumably for Schlesinger, Terry and myself. I remember that
I forgot to take my travel alarm clock."

Both dreams involve
important political personages in connection with a sport and, more
specifically, tennis in my dream and a veiled reference to tennis in Barbara's
dream (Rigg-Bobby Riggs).

I have cited
correspondences between Barbara and myself, not because they were the only ones
that occurred among the dreamers, but because they were illustrative of the
tendency for psi linkages to involve particular twosomes in the group. Although
the underlying dynamics were not explored, the circumstances suggested that the
linkages were related to transferential feelings that were evoked.

Discussion

The approach described
is only a beginning in the use of dreams as a psi retrieval mechanism under
conditions which are in keeping with the nature of dreams themselves. This
involves working along lines that link the dream to waking life and providing
the kind of social support system that helps the dreamer get at the meanings
embedded in the imagery. Work carried out in this manner results in emphatic
and intimate bonding among the people involved and creates conditions that
stimulate psi interactions among the participants.

Since dream images are
metaphorical in intent, it has been of some interest to observe how the psi
data relate to the metaphorical structure of the dream images. In the work on
experimental dream telepathy there were many examples of how one or another
property of the target would find its way into the dream of the percipient in a
metaphorically amplified way, e.g., the bronze color of Gauguin's native women
appearing in the dream of the percipient as the danger of becoming too
sunburned or where the free hand drawing of an acute angle appeared
metaphorically elaborated as canes in the shape of hockey sticks in the hands
of men attending a cocktail party.' In Example II, the single lens and concern
with single eyepieces and glasses with one lens were metaphorically conveying a
different or second sight way of knowing. In Example V, the name Jesse had
different metaphorical connotations for each of the two dreamers.

There are many
problems to be overcome before this can be said to be a workable technique.
Uppermost is the problem of dealing with the level of complexity of the data
that are reviewed each week. This includes the dreams of all the participants
during the prior week and the personal disclosure stimulated by the dream
sharing. Secondly, the evidentiality of the data themselves will have to be
established on a firmer basis.

In the anecdotal
literature there is often evidence of the existence of a highly charged field
involved in the psi event. The same is true, but for different reasons, in the
field that characterizes the appearance of psi clinically. Working in the
laboratory we are generally dealing with low level effects as far as the field
is concerned, which is perhaps the reason the data appear so much less striking
qualitatively. We have much to learn about the evolution of a psi conducive
emotional field and the factors that determine the critical psi event. The
approach we have described is one way of integrating the sleeping and waking
dimensions of our experience in the interest of generating this field.

Conclusions

Psi has long been
considered an unconscious form of communication that often undergoes some
degree of distortion before reaching consciousness. There have been efforts to
test the notion of unconscious psi effects, but these have generally been
designed within the framework of the traditional agent-target-subject test
situation. Assuming that psi is not only an unconscious process, but also a
field effect, as Murphy and others have proposed, an investigative procedure
has been followed in which the emphasis is placed on the generation of a psi
facilitating emotional field. Dream sharing and experiential work with dreams
in a group setting was used as the means of generating such a field. This paper
reports on a pilot study that was designed to explore the use of dream work in
a small group setting as a way of establishing natural psi linkages. The group
has worked together over the past two years, meeting weekly, sharing dreams of
the previous week and working with selected dreams through an experiential
process designed by the author. Psi linkages were noted as they occurred
spontaneously. Examples of such linkages are given.

[1]The core group currently carrying on this work with me now includes
Patrice Keane, Barbara Shelp, Amy Kostant and Nancy Sandow. I want to
acknowledge their helpful suggestions in the preparation of this report.